Deities & Demigods continued

[Voadam]

divine monk makes their unarmed attack (in addition to what Bhudda said above) slashing damage, although they can do bludgeoning if they forgo the vorpal (and I forget on the keen.)

 

[Drew]

The worse is anhiliating strike. St-cuthbert can destroy any god with lower ranks than him with it, especialy if he starts wielding his mace 2 handed, smithing, divine might and using feat of strenght. I figure the DC would be on average 136 (!!!).

Ancalagon

Aren't gods immune to death effects?

 

[Rook]

Gods are immune to death effects, however Annihilating Strike is not defined as such an attack. In the description of the ability, it specifically notes that deities of equal or greater rank are immune to Annihilating Strike. This strongly suggests to me that gods of lower rank are vulnerable to it.

I could not find any note in the D&Dg about the immunity of deities to Anti-Magic, although I do have a vague memory of seeing something like that. Salient Divine Abilities are specially defined to ignore Anti-Magic, however. So an Anti-Magic defense against an Annihilating Strike would not be effective.

Frankly, I feel that the definition of Annihilating Strike is simply bad game design. They made the DC of the attack directly proportional to damage. This is a big no-no, especially for a save or die effect. The two values simply don't scale the same. It's trivial to find many ways to pump up your damage numbers, while it's much harder to do the same to your saves.

 

[Killer Shrike]

Note that Hextor's hitpoints aren't quite high as they should be (he should have 1180) and Heironeous' damage total is much higher than it should be. He should have +38, not +48. WotC must have a cleric of Heironeous in the editing room. Even so, Hextor's going down fast if they just slug it out.

Grunt....so much for editorial oversight.

I will note that the situation changes immediately upon the use of spells. Hextor has a distinct advantage here, since he has far more Feats and has a sizable number of metamagic feats, including Quicken Spell and Still Spell. Heironeous has none such. This means that Hextor will be certain to be casting at least one Quickened, Stilled Spell per round in battle. This is something that Heironeous can't do. A simple Divine Favor (+6/+6) helps Hextor immensely in his battle against Heironeous. It brings his average damage total above that of "normal" Heironeous and nearly identical that of Heironeous with his own Divine Favor. Hextor's best chance is to cast off what 'buffing' spells he can during combat. I'll also note that with Hextor's Smite power and the Sunder feat, I see Heironeous' longsword going down fast. And without a longsword (and his divine bonuses with one), so will Heironeous.

The buff spells would be a good thing for Hextor, but using spells against Heironeous would come up hard vs SR 47. As far as Sundering Heironeous sword, its still a resisted roll (though if buring up Smites to do it, Hextor has the definite advantage) which makes me wonder why Heironeous doesnt wield an artifact level sword. Nevertheless, Im sure Heironeous has a few backup swords readily available, rendering this no more than an inconvenience. However, you are correct that these 2 things give Hextor a fighting chance.

The main problem with Hextor is that he's using a strategy that looks cool, but not particularly effective against Heironeous. He's quite good with almost every kind of weapon, but he lacks the raw power that specializing in a single weapon brings. Having six different weapons is nice, but he'd be much better off taking divine feats in a single type and loading up with six of those.

Agreed. The whole 6-armed different weapons bit has always struck me as being very chaotic. Its something you would expect from Erythnul more than the extremely Lawful Hextor. I would far prefer Hextor as a Blackgaurd anti-paladin sort.

I'll also note that against most opponents, Hextor will be wiping them out much faster than Heironeous. If the AC is lower than 70 or so, he'll be doing 2-3 times as much damage per round. And, of course, he has the chance to use his combat feats *19* times per round. He's just got a problem against an AC of 89.

Yes, this is not disputed. This seems largely pointless though, as in Greyhawk the gods themselves do not get directly involved. Thus making Hextor a schmuck-dropper is largely to no end result.

Also, since any god can mow thru mortals at a horrendous clip, increasing the efficiency of how many rounds are involved isnt really that impressive, IMO.

 

[Rook]

Well, he's a bit more than a shmuck dropper. I'll note that Hextor would wipe the floor with most of the other Greyhawk Gods (such as Kord or Erythnul) faster than Heironeous. Those are some pretty big shmucks. I'll also note that Hextor's *avatar* could beat up Heironeous' avatar. This is because the divine bonuses to AC are counted twice, while the attack bonuses are counted once. So both gods take big hit in the AC category, which brings Heironeous' AC within reach of Hextor's seconday and tertiary attacks.

It is a bit maddening that in almost any other kind of martial combat, Hextor wins out. If he could just get that longsword out of Heironeous' hand. He's better at archery, unarmed combat, combat with almost any other weapon. It just goes to show that min-maxing works with the specialist.

 

[Nightfall]

Alright maybe someone can answer me this. IF a god wants to add a salient ability (say annhilating strike) to an artifact (say a weapon) BUT doesn't have this ability for him/herself to use (because doesn't feel like burning a feat for this...) CAN he/she still make this artifact work or am I being too vague?

 

[Rook]

The buff spells would be a good thing for Hextor, but using spells against Heironeous would come up hard vs SR 47. As far as Sundering Heironeous sword, its still a resisted roll (though if buring up Smites to do it, Hextor has the definite advantage) which makes me wonder why Heironeous doesnt wield an artifact level sword. Nevertheless, Im sure Heironeous has a few backup swords readily available, rendering this no more than an inconvenience. However, you are correct that these 2 things give Hextor a fighting chance.

I'll actually note that the SR 47 is completely ignorable by Hextor, because of the D&Dg rules. Gods get their divine rank as a bonus on caster level checks and intermediate gods get an automatic 20 on such checks. This means that Hextor gets a 57 (with his Spell Penetration feat) *always* to pierce SR. There's no chance he'd fail to do so. It's the saves he can't manage to overcome. I should note that apparently Hextor's priest got into the editing room as well, since WotC didn't add in Heironeous' divine grace abilitiy into his saves. In any case, the saves of both gods are so high that *neither* of them is capable of casting a spell that the other one can't automatically save against. Remember that gods *don't* auto-fail on a roll of a 1. So, as I said, I see Harm as a *real* popular spell.

 

[Rook]

Alright maybe someone can answer me this. IF a god wants to add a salient ability (say annhilating strike) to an artifact (say a weapon) BUT doesn't have this ability for him/herself to use (because doesn't feel like burning a feat for this...) CAN he/she still make this artifact work or am I being too vague?

Well, I understand what you're asking, but I don't think anyone will be able to answer yet. Gods *can* make magic items that are within their portfolio that they don't have the pre-requisites for. However, the rules for Artifact creation aren't given in the D&Dg. There are some divine abilities that allow a god to make artifacts, but the are referenced to the Epic Rules book, which hasn't come out. Until we know more about artifact creation, I don't think we'll have a good feel for how hard or soft the rules are.

 

[Nightfall]

So if we have a god of destruction...it's POSSIBLE (not saying that's right but POSSIBLE), for him to have a weapon with an annhilating strike on it EVEN if he doesn't have the salient ability?

Thanks for answering Rook.

 

[Rook]

So if we have a god of destruction...it's POSSIBLE (not saying that's right but POSSIBLE), for him to have a weapon with an annhilating strike on it EVEN if he doesn't have the salient ability?

I think it's possible. However, I should note that the "Create Magic Item" ability that all gods have *is* limited in the power of items that they can create with it. Only Greater Gods can create artifacts within their portfolio. There is a set of divine salient abilities that allows lower rank deities to create artifacts (Hephaestus has 'em), though. So a God of Destruction would have to be of Greater God rank (16+) or have purchased the several salient divine abilities that allows them to work their way up to artifact creation.